A-list Confidential: How Queensland movie Love and Monsters scored an Oscar nomination
Trucking in sand to a Gold Coast park and using containers as a blue screen, the director of Love and Monsters reveals how the Queensland movie landed an Oscar nod.
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It took hard work and quite literal dragging through mud to earn Queensland its chance at an Academy Award tomorrow.
Paramount Pictures’ Love and Monsters, filmed in Brisbane in early 2019, is up for best visual effects at the top Hollywood awards night through the work of Queensland creatives Brian Cox and Matt Sloan as well as Matt Everitt and Genevieve Camilleri.
Director Michael Matthews said they knew creating a movie that hinged on monsters chasing actor Dylan O’Brien through a post apocalyptic world on the streets of Queensland was ambitious and they had to get creative to make it look realistic.
“It (the nomination) was a big surprise, but really well deserved. It’s not the biggest Hollywood movie so it just shows that everyone put a lot of hard work in,” Matthews told Confidential from his home in South Africa.
“The main thing I loved about the creatures and how the visual effects feels is that it’s really tangible and tactile and the creatures all feel like they are in their environment, in the mud or the leaves or the dirt.”
“Matt Sloan the supervisor was trying to be really good at integrating the on-set effects with the visual effects. Whether that was dust or smoke or sand or actually physically affecting things in the scene to then help with the visual effect later.”
The team also had to transform a small park on the Gold Coast into a beach cove where the crucial final scenes were filmed.
“It meant bringing in tonnes of sand and we put up blue containers to blue screen rocks and then set designed it to be this beach commune,” Matthews said. “It was quite a big achievement because it was a huge part in the movie and a location that didn’t quite exist so we had to make it.”
The movie, which is out now on Netflix and will screen at the Gold Coast Film Festival tonight, was the first film to use the Screen Queensland Studios and also filmed at Mount Cotton and Southport.
They brought in two local Australian kelpies, Hero and Dodge, to play O’Brien’s sidekick dog, Boy.
“We gave them a few patches so they looked more like mutts, and less recognisable – unless you’re Australian and then you’ll know straight away. They were pretty amazing,” Matthews said.
“Brisbane was really great … hopefully I’ll be back there to shoot something.”
BLAST FROM THE PAST
If there was one thing Gold Coast ironman Max Beattie didn’t expect to see when he walked into the Big Brother house, it was his ex girlfriend.
In a total shock to both them and Channel 7 producers, Beattie and his former flame Katie Williams were accepted onto the new season of Big Brother and had no idea until they saw each other in the house.
The pair had dated while growing up in the surf lifesaving scene and while they remained good friends they hadn’t run into each other for a number of years with Williams now living in Sydney, where she hosts a podcast.
“It was crazy. It was a bit of shock seeing her, but it quickly made sense. It was very on brand for her to be doing the show,” Beattie said.
“Then it was cool to know someone and have a familiar face.”
“We were kids when we were together. We have been good friends for a long time. There’s no hard feelings.
“But it’s been a couple of years since we’ve run into each other, so it was really bizarre.”
Beattie was quickly concerned the fact they knew each other would put a target on his back.
“I was a bit cautious about Katie and I getting along too well and people getting the wrong idea,” he said.
The 2016 World Life Saving Champion signed onto the show after the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the Coolangatta Gold event and there was uncertainty around when the sport would return.
“There was no idea when the trials would be so I decided to give it a go,” he said.
“Walking in is unlike anything. You can’t prepare yourself. There’s cameras everywhere you turn. You don’t have a centimetre of privacy.”
“You get into bed and you look up and it’s cameras and red lights and scaffolding. I never got used to it.”
Big Brother starts tomorrow night on Channel 7.
LEGACY OF LOVE
For Emily Jade O’Keeffe, Anzac Day is a chance to remember the love story that brought her family together.
The Gold Coast radio presenter grew up hearing tales about her grandfather, Allan Wegner, sneaking out of the army barracks on a hidden bike just to spend the night with her grandmother, Mavis, who he had rushed to marry before leaving to serve in Papua New Guinea in WWII.
“He and my nanna grew up on neighbouring farms in Gatton and they got married right before he went off to war,” O’Keeffe said.
“When he came back he had to stay in the army for a while but he used to go AWOL, so he would sneak out, ride a bike to my nanna, spend the night with nanna, and then jump on a bike he had hidden and ride it back to the barracks and jump into bed as if he’d been there all along.
“That’s always been a family story of what granddad did for nanna.”
The couple were married for more than 60 years before Mavis, who was an avid baker, died and recently Allan followed her, aged 96.
Mavis passed down her hand written Anzac biscuit recipe and O’Keeffe and her mother Lorraine cook them each year.
The Hot Tomato breakfast presenter and mother of two contributed the recipe to this year’s Legacy Anzac biscuit Cookbook, which is downloadable for free online and also features recipes from Curtis Stone and Maggie Beer.
O’Keeffe’s parents decided to relocate to the Gold Coast late last year two months before she announced the news of her separation from husband Gerard Murtagh after 16 years.
“My world exploded and if they hadn’t been there I don’t know how I would have got through it,” she said. “My mum has been there cooking and helping me get the kids to school while I do my job, and dad’s mowing the lawn for me and helping me do all that sort of stuff. My parents have been amazing and we’re getting there, finding a new normal.”
Emily Jade O’Keeffe’s Anzac biscuit Recipe:
•140g butter
•60g sugar
•2 tablespoon honey or syrup
•2 tablespoons water and a pinch of soda
•1 cup self-raising flour
•1 cup rolled oats
•1 cup coconut
•Salt and spices (cinnamon or nutmeg)
•2 tablespoon water
Method:
•Mix all of the dry ingredients
•Melt butter then add honey and mix then add the water and baking soda and wait until it foams lightly
•Pour into the dry mixture
•Roll out mixture, put on a baking tray and cook on a low heat until browned
SMALL SCREEN COMEBACK
There’s something cooking at Dan and Steph Mulheron’s Hervey Bay restaurants.
The former My Kitchen Rules winners, who were also runners up on last year’s season, have been spotted surrounded by cameras at their Eat at Dan + Steph’s restaurant and their new restaurant Black Bear over the past week.
The restaurants were operating while the camera crew were filming and diners, who shared some behind the scenes snaps, were told the pair “had a new TV show in the works”.
While they couldn’t comment on the upcoming show, it will be a welcome boost for the couple, who had to close the venues during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
WRITTEN IN THE STARS
It seems Brisbane has a new love match of up and coming acting stars.
Sisi Stringer, the breakout star of blockbuster Mortal Kombat, attended the Brisbane premiere screening of the movie at Event Cinemas Chermside on Wednesday with fellow Brisbane actor Joe Klocek by her side, with the pair sharing a kiss on the red carpet.
Klocek played a young Eric Bana in the new hit Australian film The Dry and was recently recognised as an emerging star at the Casting Guild Australia awards.
Later this year, he’ll return to the Queensland Theatre as he takes on the role of Eli Bell in the stage adaptation of Trent Dalton’s hugely successful debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe.
Meanwhile Stringer landed the role of femme fatale Mileena in Mortal Kombat, her first major movie role, after a global casting search in 2019, having graduated from QUT’s acting program a year earlier.
The pair, both earmarked as future stars of Australian acting, will certainly be a duo to watch.
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The triumphant Brisbane Lions women’s squad joined their Gold Coast Suns rivals at The Gabba’s Legends Room on Tuesday nightf or the annual AFLW Awards, which was broadcast live on Foxtel from five venues across the country. The Lions’ premiership trophy took pride of place next to the stage while Courtney Hodder took home Goal of the Year on the night.
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